Open Corporates and Duedil - this looks fascinating

Chris Taggart, a commenter on the TJN blog, has pointed to a new site called Open Corporates, which I'm encountering for the first time. I put in 'Glencore' into the search box and was directed to several useful-looking sites, including a lively discussion by Nick Hildyard of the Corner House in London. They also reveal a number of Glencore companies around the world, including 16 in Bermuda and 20 in the UK. They say that:

"OpenCorporates aims to do a straightforward (though big) thing: have a URL for every company in the world."

That is quite a big thing; their home page says they currently have nearly 24 million corporations listed.

This looks like it is going to be a most useful resource.

Update: this site, Duedil was just recommended to us too. Also looks interesting.

The best way to look up UK company information, for free. Financial records, litigations, directorships, people search, stock information & more. On every company in the UK. Absolutely free.
7.9M Companies, 9M Directors and growing.

A correspondent said:

"Generates pretty amazing charts showing complex group structures."

We haven't tried it yet, but as mentioned, it does look useful.